Children are asylum seekers too ...... by Miriam Halahmy

Recently I have discovered that the UK still has around the same number of applications for asylum as we have had for at least the past 8 years - just over 30,000 a year.
In 2014 there were 1,861 separated children seeking asylum in the UK.
Hardly a swarm! Not a record to be proud of either.

I have become increasingly concerned about the plight of people seeking a place of safety in recent times. Many are children, some only babies in arms. I have asked myself, What would I do in this situation? The same as my great grandparents, I hope.

My grandparents with my Dad aged seven and his sister, in Paris for my grandmother's brother, Louis', wedding in 1928. In 1942 Louis was deported from Paris and murdered in Auschwitz.

My grandmother wrote in her brief autobiography that in 1904 when she was only eight she heard her parents ( my great grandparents) speak about leaving their home in Poland. "At that time pogroms were raging in Poland and Russia. Poland belonged to Russia and in those years anti-semitism was very ripe...All this I heard my parents speak about." Her parents left soon after with her two brothers for Belgium and France.

Grandma's school Atlas, Lyon 1908

My grandparents came to the UK before WW1. If they had not come they would have been murdered in the 1940s in the Holocaust. My grandfather had five brothers, all married with children. Only one survived after six years in camps and forced labour - his great niece, my father's cousin. We share the same maiden name and I visited her today. She has back troubles and she quietly said, "The vertebrae in my neck were all crushed by the end of the war from carrying sacks of cement as a child."

With modern 24 hours news coverage, newspapers published every day, constant updating of media on the net, there is no excuse for ignorance. We can all weigh up the information and form an opinion about migration and the need to seek a place of safety.

The world is on the move, similar to when the  Jewish communities of Poland and Russia were forced out by terror in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and came to the UK and America, contributing enormously to life where ever they went. Were the Jewish migrants unusual? Were they more honest, hard-working, clever than current migrants? Well, let's look at the evidence.

One piece has stood out for me since the riots and looting of August 2011. London looked as though it was burning and young people were at the heart of the terror. But let's look again at who did not riot.
David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, has pointed out that 20,000 young people in his constituency did not riot. Neither did young people from some of the other communities such as the Chinese and Bangladeshi communities.
But neither were the rioters and looters asylum-seeking children.

I am not going to quote evidence I don't have to hand about hard-working immigrants and how their children settle down in our schools and do well. But everything I read in the media suggests this is true in the UK and around the world. Certainly I have seen enough  first-hand evidence as a teacher in London schools for twenty-five years and then on author visits to schools.

Children of Bangladeshi families, East End school, 2013.

Our country is not full. We could take everyone in the jungle in Calais tomorrow in fact. Yes, I know some of them will be criminals but there will always be a minority of bad migrants elbowing their way in. It's a fact of life. Some billionaires who take up residence here are not so great either.
 But that is not a reason to raise higher the barbed wire.

The UK needs to take its place alongside all the countries of the EU and around the world to try and ease the plight of those fleeing their homes and radically improve our miserable asylum figures. Those are the statistics I want to see on the news.

We cannot change the situation on the ground in Syria, for example, but can we really continue to close our eyes to children and adults clambering off rubber dinghies onto Greek beaches and pretend they will just disappear?

Teenage asylum seeker reading a piece  he has written about leaving his home and family. Most asylum seekers never see their families and their homes again and suffer terrible homesickness for years.

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Go and open the Door by Miriam Halahmy

I have been running workshops with asylum seekers from teens to adults for several years through English Pen who champion literature and human rights. One of the most successful texts I have used is the poem 'Go and Open the Door' by Miroslav Holub,  This poem can help to change lives.

I first used the poem with a group of teenagers in a project based at the Tricycle Theatre. We read the poem and then I literally opened the outside door and said, "What if you opened the door and outside was Africa?"
Ahmad from Kuwait wrote,
Go and open the door..../maybe you will see death and war/ maybe you will see guns, bullets, bombs and terror/ But no matter what, you will see happy, helpful, handsome people/ So go and open the door...
Then he said, "This has been the best day of my life!" His voice had been heard at last.

In this time of uncertainty, after the attacks in France last week and the sense that all our freedoms are under threat, there are voices which we generally don't hear - those of asylum seekers. These are people who have already been through our worst nightmares and are trying to build a new life in a strange country so far from home, where they often feel silenced and misunderstood.
But we can learn so much from them if we are only willing to listen.



I have just completed an 8 week course with asylum seekers at the MRCF in Ladbroke Grove.  The theme of my workshops was 'Writing for Health and Well Being.' My aim was to provide a toolbox to dip into and to experience how writing can help express the whole spectrum of experiences and feelings.  I used simple poetry devices to get started.

I want/ I don't want ( Martha)
I want to start my new life with courage and
passion.
I don't want to be stuck anymore because
life is beautiful.
I want to run and buy what I like.
I don't want to lose time with my life.
I want to go to the sky and see how far it is
I don't want to stop dreaming in the night.

As the weeks progressed the participants began to feel that writing could be a part of the lives as a way of helping to deal with their experiences and how everything had changed for them.

Kanchana wrote, "Writing helps a lot to relax the mind and can express feelings in writing. I hadn't thought of writing like this before."
Florence felt that when she first joined the class she was quite uncertain how writing could help with improving her life. But by the end of the course she was writing longer and longer pieces and declared, "Asking us to answer the question, Who am I? is simple words, a simple question, but it is really very big. Doing this writing for me has been very positive and it has changed everything for me."

Who am I  by Florence 
I am a midwife.nurse
I am not practising.
I am married
I am not a mother.
I am very active
I am not doing anything now.
You can't judge a book by its cover by Florence
I might be short but I am complete,
am black but still human
I can't read and write but I understand
don't judge me by first sight
but after hearing my views.

I brought in a set of objects and the participants chose things to write about. They went on to take photographs in the neighbourhood and wrote texts to go with the pictures. These have now been made into posters and will be exhibited in the local community.  Here is some of the writing and photos I took in the workshop.

Power over my life   by Abrehet

I have the power of reading the bible and following my religion

I have the power to do volunteering.

I shall stay out late by Grace

because I need to see a friend

because both of us need to talk

because I need my status to change

because her advice is so important to me

After these preliminary sessions I felt that the group had come to see how writing could have a role to play in health and well being. The participants were much more relaxed and confident about their writing. Florence began writing at home and bringing in pieces to read out to us. 

POWER OVER MY LIFE by Florence

Power is that inner most energy within you

Over the world. People express different views on this. Some are

Weak and some strong. But we all need

Encouragement  in life to

Respond to.

Other things but that also

Varies although

Every time and again on

Resting and thinking about power and aware that

Money is good but its personal and its

Yours but never

Love money only

Interestingly try to

Fix

Everything that needs fixing.

I decided it was a good time to work on the Holub poem, Go and Open the Door.

This was the poem which lit up the room. "Writing opens doors and gives us whole new possibilities in our lives." Faranak.

After our writing session the group worked with  musicians who took lines from the poems they had written and composed a song which we sang, hummed and quoted for the rest of the course. Here are the opening lines :-

Go and open the door

Why are you calling me?

This is the time for me

Why are you calling me?

Go and open the door

Maybe it's good for you

A surprise, it could change your life.

I loaded the song onto Sound Cloud  - click here to listen.

Our course ended on December 5th 2014 and we finished with a celebration. The participants read out extracts from their work and were presented with certificates by English PEN. We all sang our beautiful song together and despite sadness at having to part company, the participants took away with them a notebook with their writings and a toolbox of ideas.

Because I know what is beautiful and is write and I try more confident myself. Martha

Writing can help in expressing yourself when in distress or in a happy mood. Grace

Miriam reaches our hearts and feelings and because of that I hope we were success in the workshop.

                                                                                                                             Kanchana

If I have some problems writing it can help me and I am very happy with the class. Abrehet

I enjoy everything. Abbas

Writing is very powerful to inspire confidence and self esteem in people who have lost it. Matilde

When I come here I forget about my troubles and my pain. Amina

I am a book. Some chapters are good and some are really terrible. But it is not finished yet. Thuri

I am a scientific person and I never wrote poetry before. Kanchana.

So go and open the door - it could change your life!

Happy writing!!

www. miriamhalahmy.com

My suitcase is packed...... by Miriam Halahmy

How do you write what is in your heart if you are fifteen years old, your mother tongue is Arabic or Somali or Amharic and you have only been in the UK for six months? This year I had the opportunity to work on a project organised by English PEN and the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn, North London, for newly arrived young people. Last week we launched the anthology of their work, 'My Suitcase is Packed' at the theatre, with many of the young people reading on stage.

After working with people from many different countries with minimal English for some years I have come to realise that in fact 'less is more' and perhaps it is even possible to get closer to your feelings if your vocabulary is very limited.
Asked to write on the subject of 'Power Over My Life', in the form of an acrostic, one boy from Somali wrote :
My life is like a movie
Yesterday is gone and it will never come back.

Watching these young people come on stage and read in English in front of an audience of their peers, their teachers, the guest authors which included the well know poet and performer, John Hegley, I was amazed at their poise and confidence. They read beautifully, they were clear and concise and they gave us a very strong impression of their feelings about their home countries and their lives in the UK.

One of the poems I used in my session was 'Go and Open the Door' by Miroslav Holub. Some amazing and deeply moving poetry emerged.
Hamed from Somalia who has not seen his mother's face for five years wrote :
Go and open the door
maybe outside there is a river of blood
Go and open the door
maybe outside there is my old home.


Being given the opportunity to bear witness has a huge effect on asylum seekers in a writing workshop. Ahmed commented to us after we listened to his poem, "This has been the best day of my life." I interpreted this as meaning, at last I have been heard. This is what he wrote in class :
Iraq is the country
maybe I will see dead and war
maybe I will see guns bombs and bullets
but no matter what
I will see happy, helpful and nice people.

One of the high points of the performance at the Tricycle was the reading of a poem by John and a simultaneous translation into Somali by Abukhar which he did very fluently.

...your journey is your own
my heart is like a stone
and I know how it must be
I know you must be free
and I knew you wouldn't 
get very far without me.

Philip Cowell, Director of the Readers and Writers programme at English PEN commented on stage, "Writing is a brave thing to do. It is a true expression of free speech and it is a very brave thing to come up on stage and to read your work." English PEN campaigns for freedom of speech for all writers wherever they are in the world and fundraises for projects in prisons and with refugees and asylum seekers to ensure they also have access to opportunities to write and be heard.

All the participants received this lovely certificate and will have the opportunity to use the work in these sessions towards receiving an Arts Award. For some of these young people who will miss out on GCSEs this is a chance to gain a first qualification and they were all very proud of their certificates, as you can imagine.

Go and open the door

Maybe outside there's

A celebration of your mother's birthday and lovely faces

smiling with you.

Go and open the door

Maybe there's a Lion fighting with the people or your country is burning.

Go and open the door

You'll see your mother smiling at you

Or your boyfriend

Just

Go and open the door

Maybe there's 

Your boyfriend kissing your lips

Or your dreams coming true.

by Fadumo Mohamed ( who enjoys reading history books, playing basketball and watching TV.)

You can find out more about English PEN at this link : http://www.englishpen.org/

http://www.miriamhalahmy.com/